


Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by soft_october



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mentions of Sex, No Smut, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: "When the ship puts in at port, Aziraphale is hustled away by the captain to the purser's office: rescuing the third son of an established lord will merit him a fat prize indeed. Aziraphale’s face is a pale oval caught between a pair of long blue coats as Crowley, who isn’t anything to anyone - except he thought he was, he thought - watches him go, peeking through the slats in the ship's railing. Those blue eyes - too innocent, too kind for what this world expects of him -  keep lock with his until the last.Aziraphale is fussed over, put under the command of the captain who rescued him, gets a letter from his father that he carefully keeps in the cover of his bible, continues his slow rise through the ranks of His Majesty’s Navy.Crowley, he later learns, takes up piracy."Golden Age of Piracy AU.





	Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

_April 12th, 1705_

_Off the Coast of Puerto Rico_

 

The sea and the sky blur together, the rivulets of steel blue and gray twisting, blending, tumbling, running like watercolors. The sky tastes like blood and gunpowder.

Air smacks out of his lungs when he hits the water, he tries to breathe but there’s only water rushing in and he’s choking, reaching, seeing fire glittering on the water’s surface above him like light inside rubies. A separate weight crashing down beside him, heavy, wooden, broken, rising up, away from the depths and he reaches, misses, splinters sliding underneath his skin. His mouth opens to scream but its the ocean, filling him, surrounding him, coughing, firelight growing fainter above his head and he can't swim up to where it -

Pressure, pulling, orange growing wider (going dim at the edges) until face bursting through and air precious glorious sacred lungfuls of air -

Cold hands clinging to him.

“Hold on.” His rescuer. It should be a scream but the words are swallowed by the roar of the cannons and the flame. The voice he remembers he’s heard it before it’s

_Thought I'd never see you today._

_Crowley! You’re not supposed to be here, this is only for officers!_

_Bet you won’t tell._

“Cr-Crow-”

“Be quiet. Breathe.” Scared, he’s so scared he’s - “Hold on to this.” Wood presses into his hand: a fragmented slab of the deck. A slight, freezing cold hand balls up the back of Aziraphale's shirt. Where did his coat go?

“You’re okay,” the voice tries to soothe. But he can see the white around the irises of the cabin boy's eyes, the reflection of yellow and red flames burning over Aziraphale’s left shoulder. Crowley tries to stop him but Aziraphale turns to stare at the ship, the HMS _Eden_ , the only home they have known for a year, alight against the backdrop of a cloudy dawn. Though Aziraphale is two years older, Crowley lets him weep - tears lost in the saltwater wash of the sea- and doesn’t poke fun and rubs small circles on his back with frigid wet fists.

They cling to their little raft together for seven hours before they are rescued, seven hours of drifting through the shards of their ship, through the bodies of the crew. When HMS Lancer plucks them from the sea, they are dropped onto the deck, to face all those officers, all expecting Aziraphale to provide the report, he’s the junior officer, he’s the one whose parents purchased his commission, he’s the one who -

“It was pirates, sir,” says Crowley, who is fourteen years old, and a cabin boy besides. The Captain - a flogging Captain if ever Aziraphale has seen one - cuffs him instantly. The crack of the blow sends the small body crashing down onto the perfectly scrubbed wooden boards and Aziraphale jumps, but doesn’t go to him, doesn't watch the slow trickle of blood down the side of the boy's face. He recovers the voice which had been lost somewhere in the anguish of the day, informs the captain in as precise and exacting detail as his sixteen year old mind can piece it together, hoping it will be enough, fighting down sobs of relief when it is.

Later, belowdecks, he will press a cool rag to his friends ear, murmuring comforting nonsense words while Crowley curls around him, shivering, trying to absorb Aziraphale’s warmth.

When the ship puts in at port, Aziraphale is hustled away by the captain to the purser's office: rescuing the third son of an established lord will merit him a fat prize indeed. Aziraphale’s face is a pale oval caught between a pair of long blue coats as Crowley, who isn’t anything to anyone - except he thought he was, he _thought_ \- watches him go, peeking through the slats in the ship's railing. Those blue eyes - too innocent, too kind for what this world expects of him -  keep lock with his until the last.

Aziraphale is fussed over, put under the command of the captain who rescued him, gets a letter from his father that he carefully keeps in the cover of his bible, continues his slow rise through the ranks of His Majesty’s Navy.

Crowley, he later learns, takes up piracy.

* * *

_November 24th, 1709_

_Port Royal, Jamaica_

 

Aziraphale pursues the thief, half in anger, half in terror of what will happen if he is discovered not in uniform. The captain of the _Lancer_ is not a gentle man. Aziraphale has so far been able to escape his wrath, but been forced to bear witness to countless punishments.

The blackguard is waiting for him in an alcove on the narrow street, snatches at his coat when Aziraphale rounds the corner, each breath a new sear in his chest, not prepared for an attack, not expecting, so stupid, but what’s this - Laughter.

“So I can still run circles around you, then?” The bitter grin in his voice on that day on the Eden, the day they raced to the mizzenmast - it was

“Crowley.”

“So you do remember? I’m not just another filthy little thief?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t correct your fellow officer.”

“I was too busy running after you-”

Crowley embraces him and Aziraphale tilts, almost hysterical - does he have a knife is he going to stick - Alarm shifts to shame. How could he ever believe Crowley would...

“Where have you been?” he mumbles into his Crowley’s shoulder. When had the other boy gotten so tall? “Why didn’t you join me on the _Lancer_? I told them to bring you I said that-”

“Oh angel,” Crowley chuckles, and Aziraphale is paralyzed by the nostalgia of that word, _angel_ , Crowley teasing him on the _Eden,_ pulling at his light hair, prodding at his pale skin. “Those that’re on your level won’t ever pay a mind about people on mine.”

“That’s not true,” Aziraphale, red creeping into his cheeks. “I think about you all the time.”

Crowley takes a step back, eyes flicking left and right, searching Aziraphale’s face.

“I believe it,” the younger boy admits, finally, - but _so_ much taller, all long gangly limbs - “I think about you too.”

Aziraphale is suddenly nervous, shy, worried that Crowley will find what Aziraphale thinks must be etched in every line of his features.

“I can’t stay long, they’ll send others after me.”

“Ah.” Crowley’s lips pursed, annoyed, shutting himself off. “Can’t be seen speaking to the likes of me?”

“I can’t be seen talking to anyone, especially not without my uniform. You know how a captain can be.” Aziraphale’s back itches just to think about it. Crowley recognizes his the source of his distress and hands him back his hat.

“What’s so great about the Navy then?” Crowley asks him. Aziraphale settles the hat on his head. Crowley tugs on the ridiculous wig underneath. “Is it because they’ve given you better hair?”

“Stop that,” Aziraphale swats at his hand. “It’s not the hair.”

“Is it the beatings? The nice blue coats?” The mocking tone again, but notes of something else underneath. Aziraphale is too anxious to sort it all out.

“How else would I live, Crowley?” The disappointment in the face of his family _we knew you weren’t meant for greatness but this -_

“You could live like I do?” Oh. That otherness in Crowley’s voice. Hope.

“I’ve heard how you get by,” Aziraphale is strained, walking some unexpected line of rigging he can see is quickly fraying. “I don’t want any part of that.”

“Because being beaten for not wearing a hat sounds so good to you?”

“Because - because the world needs order! It can’t be chaos and pirates and burning ships.”

“Just slaves and prisoners, is that it?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Go on, better get going.” Crowley shoves at the air with his hands. Aziraphale opens his mouth, closes it, feels like a stopped bottle of champagne that’s been shaken and rolling on stormy waves. He backs away, willing Crowley to understand, incapable of piecing together the phrases that will make it right.

“Wait.” Aziraphale stops moving when Crowley quick as you please seizes his wrist, pulls it to his lips, plants the softest of kisses there, right where the vein thrums against the bone. A delicious thrill runs up his arm and Aziraphale makes a sharp, eager noise. Crowley closes his eyes, just for a second, then he’s off down the road and Aziraphale is left there, with a look on his face like he’s been handed the reins of Apollo’s phaeton, and is expected to hold the horses to their task.

There is one letter, addressed to him on the _Lancer_ , before he’s promoted and changes ships. The spelling is questionable, but the handwriting is dignified, the signature - a friend - unmistakably Crowley. He conceals it in his bible, next to the letter from his father, so many years gone by.

* * *

_February 4th, 1711_

_St. Georges, Grenada_

 

There’s an early morning altercation between the crew of the HMS Seraphim and a two bit crew who sought to emancipate a shipment of liquor from a schooner in port, and those on watch are sent scurrying after the criminals into the dark, serpentine alleys of the city of St. George’s. Aziraphale shouldn’t be here, his newly minted title searing like a brand across his brain. The ranking officer should be delegating, should send others in his place but how can he send another man to his death _you need to be harder on the men they see the weakness in you and it will be your downfall -_ The pirate ahead of him stops running, rounds on him, blade raised and then -

“Aziraphale?”

“Crowley?”

Aziraphale doesn’t lower his sword, and it pricks his pride when Crowley drops his immediately, sure in his convictions of Aziraphale's personal loyalties. Even with his lieutenant's bars, is he so insignificant a threat that Crowley can simply -

“Come off it, angel. I’ve not seen you in how many years and you want ‘t spend it fighting?” Crowley’s hand, curled around a bottle of rum, rises to his lips and he drinks deeply, hands the bottle to Aziraphale when he’s through. Aziraphale’s eyes dart to the shining rim, the gentle slosh of the alcohol inside. He is tempted. But he remembers why he is here, why the navy had pursued the crew of the _Cobra._

“Your crew is - they’re criminals, Crowley.” The condemnation is a kind of defense, but it sounds pathetic even to Aziraphale’s own ears. Crowley’s broken smile is unchanged, arm still offering the bottle, and when after another moment of hesitation Aziraphale reaches for, it Crowley grabs him, crowds him against the wall. Aziraphale pulls him in by the thin cotton fabric of his shirt - still impeccable still looking better than Aziraphale ever could - and kisses him. He’s never kissed anyone before but Crowley doesn’t seem to mind, his mouth moving in kind with Aziraphale’s, gentle, exploring, only pulling back to whisper -

“I missed you.”

An ache blooms in Aziraphale’s chest and he wonders if Crowley somehow stole the breath from within him.

“Lieutenant!” One the petty officers from Aziraphale's ship. Far enough to give them time, too close _too close_ not to send Aziraphale’s heart into a frantic jig. Crowley clutches his hands, kisses him once more, brief, almost chaste, just beneath the ear. Aziraphale shivers.

“Go,” he tells Crowley, even as he clings to his fingertips. Crowley waits a moment more, watching him with those amber brown eyes, then he severs their connection and sprints down the cramped avenue. Aziraphale draws his pistol and fires high, grunts in pain when the kickback jams his arm. Footsteps rapidly approaching, the white and blue of a uniform.

“Lieutenant! Did you capture him?”

Aziraphale shakes his head, and his back aches with the force of the gunshot and with the awful, restrictive weight of five years wearing the heavy coat of blue brocade.

* * *

_August 19th, 1712_

_Bridgetown, Barbados_

 

They lay coiled in the shared sheets and dried sweat of their first lovemaking, in the back room of the sort of place that caters to men of their proclivities. Stifled laughter and eager moans slip through the cracks in the thin walls, and the crash of the distant waves drifts in through the open window along the seabreeze. The night presses in like dark velvet, hot and damp and humid. Aziraphale runs the pads of his fingers down the scars of his lover’s back. He had heard the muffled groans and eager fumblings of his shipmates in the dark, but had never known, never could have suspected what -

“Let’s take my ship,” Crowley whispers into the pillow, muffled, Aziraphale could mistake it for something else if he wanted to. “The _Cobra._ The captain is a decent man, always looking for an experienced pair of hands. Don’t have to stay on, of course. Just long enough to put some distance between us and them. You and I, we could go anywhere.” That marked lilt in his voice again, the sun in his eyes the day he’d stolen Aziraphale’s hat.

Aziraphale goes still, and Crowley must know what his answer will be but the shyness of his voice is too much, and Aziraphale collapses in on himself.

“My dear, you know I can’t-” Crowley breathes, and it’s the same hiss as when Aziraphale closes his books and extinguishes his lamp at night, plunging the crabbed room into darkness. Crowley, knowing he’s pressed too far, rolls over and gathers Aziraphale towards him.

“You don’t understand, it’s not that I, that we…”

“Shh. I know.”

“I can’t just-”  

“It’s fine. Come here.” Aziraphale goes, and they take comfort in the feel of pale skin sliding against tanned, Crowley still so cold, leeching away the warmth, making Aziraphale yelp when cold toes run against his bare leg.

Aziraphale tries to contain the drops of memories as they form, as if they were cocoa beans in a woven palm basket, but they slip through the cracks and the time wanes away before he can devise another way to hold them. He must return before he is missed, and despite Crowley’s wheedles and whines he leaves the bed, picks the clothes - not his, sent along with the note that brought him here - and dresses in the unfamiliar threads. He stares at the empty place beside Crowley, thinks how easy it would be to -

“Consider it, angel.”

Aziraphale pretends not to hear him, sneaks out of the room, back to where he’s hidden his uniform, must be back in his bunk by the break of day.

He makes it, but the victory is as hollow and cold as the lonely berth he returns to.

Eight months later, the HMS _Seraphim_ is ordered to pursue and take the _Cobra_ , its captain and crew responsible for the capture and murder of every man on board a peaceful merchant vessel. Aziraphale doesn’t believe, can’t imagine Crowley capable of such cruelty, supposes it must be a mistake, perhaps he can -

They take the _Cobra_ easily, and Aziraphale’s captain orders that the pirates who survived the initial attack be strung up on the highest yardarm without mercy, without trial, for the horror of the transgressions they have committed.

But Crowley is not among the dead, or the prisoners.

Nine bodies hang from the topsail, but Crowley isn’t one of them.

* * *

_June 30th, 1713_

_Nassau, Jamaica_

 

Aziraphale is hiding in civilian clothes, imbibing drink at an illegal establishment and he knows he should care but he can’t, _you’re almost a captain now, time to consider the admiralty,_ not with the memories that hang on him like chains. He considers the prospect of collapsing onto the floor and never rising when he catches sight of a familiar profile going past the window and he recognizes it with a sense of _home_ , would know it anywhere  and he’s scrambling to heave his feet out from under him to stumble out the door to put his hand on the man’s shoulder and say

“Crowley?” but the body shakes him off, keeps walking, like nothing has happened, like _they_ hadn’t - but Crowley would never, he must be mistaken -

But no. Aziraphale could not mistake those eyes, sunlight through honey.

“Crowley!” He’s alive! He made it off the _Cobra_ or he was never there or another miracle, like the _Eden_. Aziraphale wants to tangle his fingers in the dark hair, press their mouths together, feel their bodies move in tandem once more and then - But Crowley’s face is carved from stone, and Aziraphale doesn’t like this new jest.

“You don’t know - you can’t imagine how much -”

“Didn’t realize that men like you and I were on speaking terms, then.” Crowley is not toying. Crowley is furious.

“Crowley what -”

“The crew of the _Cobra_. Your navy - my god, the cabin boy couldn’t have been much older than fifteen.” The Navy disregards Aziraphale’s trauma, speaking through him, ten years of automated responses activated as his oldest friend (dearest love?) stares down at him like Aziraphale is old grime on the anchor lines.

“The Cobra was guilty of piracy, you murdered an entire crew-”

“Of a slave ship, Aziraphale,” he snaps. “We liberated a slave ship. Or didn’t the navy tell you that part?” Aziraphale goes lightheaded, dizzy, why is it whenever he’s around Crowley he can never get enough air, even before their first ship went down, even before the attack and the black water, he could never breathe when the younger boy smiled at him, or tried to goad him with gentle teasing, or made him laugh when he fell short of the captain’s expectations and suffered in disgrace. Always always always like he was being slowly turned in a vice, air being forced out of him.

“Do you want me to tell you what it was like below decks on that ship, where we killed the captain and all his mates?” Crowley spits. “Imagine every plump, musty preacher that stood at the pulpit of your little home parish and told you about hell for six hours each and every Sunday. All those terrible tormets he told you about with all the gory details they love to scare you with?” - The fire the brimstone, the wailing and gnashing of teeth the flies the locusts -

Crowley gets close to him, the reek of alcohol thick between them.

“That priest had - no - bleeding - _idea_ \- what - hell - is.” He punctuates each word with a hard press into Aziraphale’s sternum. “And your Navy is more guilty of murder than my old crew ever was.” Aziraphale sees the suffering in his face, wants to wipe away the unshed tears from Crowley’s cheeks.

“My dear...”

“Don’t call me that!” Crowley’s eyes are bright, mouth twisted in an injured snarl. Then he leaves him in the road, stumbling drunk, back towards the docks, to his home, to the waves, and Aziraphale suffers a terrible rending as his heart tears out of him and follows.

Aziraphale, ashen, half dead, drags himself back to the fort.

Crowley tries to go back to sea.

He lasts a year and a half before the Navy drags him back in chains.

* * *

_December 21st, 1715_

_Port Royal, Jamaica_

 

The guard’s eyebrows raise suggestively, and he laughs something hideous and lewd, wide mouth full of blackened teeth. The stench is unparalleled. Aziraphale, drenched in cold nervous sweat, smiles thin and and uncomfortable, this won’t work this is never going to work he’s going to get caught and then the guard tosses him the keys.

“Thanks very much for the bit of relief, sir,” the disgusting creature mumbles as he departs from the cellblock to enjoy the price of bribery. “You enjoy yourself, now.” Aziraphale hurries down the cellblock, hands shaking as he fumbles through the shards of metal.

“Aziraphale?” It’s a thin whisper, but it strengthens the lieutenant’s resolve all the same.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s hands reach through the bars of the cell catching, grasping, holding on to Crowley like they are boys caught in the swells of a shipwreck once again.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Crowley scolds, light even as death awaits him at the break of day, even as the shadow of their last meeting hangs about them, a shroud. “‘M fairly sure the Navy’s got rules about aid and comfort to the enemy.”

“You’re not my enemy.” Aziraphale’s hands are trembling, and Crowley takes the metal ring from him, numbly.

“No? Am I not a pirate? Do we not need, laws, order, good men to stand against the chaos?” Crowley mutters, flipping through the ring of keys.

“Not these laws,” Aziraphale admits. “Not these men.” Crowley opens the cell with a resounding screech, folds himself into Aziraphale’s arms, trembling, but with fear or relief Aziraphale cannot tell.  

“You’re a terrible man, angel.” The sound is muffled by Aziraphale’s coat. “D’you know that?”

“Why?”

“Because you make me insane.” Crowley twists in his grip, staring down at Aziraphale though long lashes, the flare of emotion rising in his cheeks. “What am I supposed to do now, escape while you stay, while you take the blame? That guard is a drunk but he’s not a fool, he won’t swing for your mistakes.” Aziraphale doesn’t understand why he’s doing this now, ruining it, why can’t Crowley just let them have this, why does he need -

“No,” Crowley says shakes his head. “Not this time.”

Stepping back inside the cell.

What?

“We’re in this together,” that crooked grin again. “No matter what happens. We go out tonight or go out together at dawn. You either think what they do is right and we both deserve to die on the gallows tomorrow morning or they’re wrong and you and I deserve to get out of here, together, with our necks unbroken.You can’t have it both ways. You need to pick a side.” But doesn’t Crowley understand? Doesn’t he see what - but Aziraphale finally understands that Crowley _doesn’t_ , and allows him this moment, plays along with the game.  

“And which sides are those?” he drawls, pretending he needs convincing. “The Navy or Piracy?”

“Of course not. It’s between them or me.” Crowley’s bottom lip quivers, defiant and scared, as if he even thinks that there’s any other choice. Aziraphale smiles, grateful, the burden of the decision lifted, finally, no matter what happens, even if they’re hanged tomorrow for it.

“You, you absurd man.” A thousand cords of tension that have been winding him tighter and tighter for years are sliced free by Crowley’s sudden and shy smile.

“What?” Crowley is cautious optimism. “Did that - are you really?”

“No, I committed bribery, theft and treason because I’m going to try beg forgiveness from the admiral tomorrow morning,” Aziraphale is overwrought with the bloom of happiness and he can breathe, long deep breaths in and out.

“Theft?” Aziraphale throws the stolen uniform at him.

“Put this on. Let’s get out of here.”

 

Crowley does not return to piracy.

Aziraphale does not return to the Navy.

There is money enough between them for a schooner that rides high and quick in the water, for a small, discreet crew that shrugs and changes the subject when the matter of their captains sharing a cabin arises, for a cabin filled with small plans and books and shells and trinkets and letters going yellow with age, for a home. It’s a reliable merchant vessel, known for taking on the odd dodgy job. Aziraphale wants to call it the Eden II, but Crowley tells him it’s bad luck. They’ll forge their own name, their own path, their own side.

They do.

They call it _The_ _Ineffable_.

  
  
  



End file.
